Sunday, June 25, 2006

This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated personas and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips an face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body....

---Walt Whitman, from the Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen

Todd Totale said...

Now this is what you shall do: Update your blog!